"No comment" from Red Hat on whether it will strike a deal with rival VMware.

Ubuntu Server will be one of the first operating systems offered to customers of VMware's infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud, with OS images that should be portable across clouds operated by VMware and rivals such as Amazon.

vCloud Hybrid Service, set to go live in September, will support all 90 or so operating systems certified to run on the vSphere virtualization platform. For most of those, customers will need to install the operating system themselves. A select few will be published by VMware on what's basically an app store, making them a bit more accessible.

VMware's pricing page currently lists just Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, and CentOS. It has been reported that SUSE Linux is on its way. Ubuntu will join the party sometime in the fourth quarter, likely November.

"That's certainly what we've been working towards with VMware, that Ubuntu is available on the vCHS [vCloud Hybrid Service] and that it's an Ubuntu image that we produce," Ubuntu Server and Cloud Product Manager Mark Baker told Ars at the VMworld conference this week. "It should be fully compatible and exactly the same as the Ubuntu you'd run on Amazon or [Windows] Azure."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a standard option on Amazon, which runs the biggest IaaS cloud, but it's not clear when it might make it onto vCloud Hybrid Service.

VMware and Red Hat are increasingly becoming competitors. With VMware touting its new services and software this week at a conference attended by 22,000 people, Red Hat released a blog post arguing that its "open" approach to hybrid cloud computing is better. Publishing CentOS instead of RHEL could be a snub directed by VMware at Red Hat, as CentOS is essentially a version of Red Hat that customers can get without paying for a Red Hat subscription, compiled from the RHEL source code.

"No comment from us on this one" is the answer a Red Hat spokesperson gave Ars when asked if RHEL will be an option on vCloud Hybrid Service.

UPDATE: VMware has told Ars that it plans to add Red Hat to its catalog of OSes, but did not say when.

vCloud Hybrid Service aims to be a natural extension of VMware's virtualization platform, letting customers run applications in the cloud and in their own data centers and manage them all in the same way.

From a purely technological perspective, ignoring competitive concerns, it would make sense for RHEL to be front and center on the VMware cloud. Red Hat is far and away the most successful enterprise Linux vendor, and VMware is far and away the most successful server virtualization vendor. Although Red Hat would prefer customers to use the KVM hypervisor instead of VMware's, many businesses do run Red Hat's OS on vSphere.

Customers should still be able to use RHEL on the VMware cloud if they install it themselves. VMware has said the cloud "will support the thousands of applications and more than 90 operating systems that are certified to run on vSphere." RHEL is one of those supported operating systems.

Ubuntu users can also upload their own images instead of using the ones provided by VMware and Canonical.

"Customers who created an image on any currently supported version of Ubuntu can transfer that image to the vCloud Hybrid Service," an Ubuntu fact sheet states. "To ensure that VMware provides a safe and secure environment for critical business applications, VMware will only accept images based on versions of Ubuntu for which updates are still being produced."

There wasn't a ton of heavy lifting Canonical had to do to get Ubuntu running on vCHS, Baker said. "A lot of it is validation, testing and making sure it behaves the same way as it does on AWS [Amazon Web Services] or other platforms and that we have a nice model to be able to provide updates," he said.

Baker said Ubuntu 12.04, the Long Term Support release from April 2012, will be on vCloud Hybrid Service, along with more recent versions up through the 13.10 release scheduled for October.

Portability across clouds is a key goal for Canonical. It's inevitable that customers who are heavily dependent on VMware virtualization and management tools would find it complicated to move workloads back and forth between the VMware cloud and the Amazon cloud. But Ubuntu itself won't throw up any roadblocks.

"There's a lot of customer uncertainty about how portable are these things," Baker said. By validating and testing Ubuntu images on Amazon, Azure, and VMware, Canonical hopes to provide some certainty. If you want to move a workload from one cloud to another, "the desired goal is that you don't see any difference at all," he said. Canonical's Juju and cloud-init tools can also help customers deploy workloads to various cloud services.

vCloud Hybrid Service will charge customers by the amount of CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth they need. Operating system costs are in addition to that. Windows Server on vCloud Hybrid Service will cost $25 per virtual CPU per month, while CentOS is free.

Ubuntu will be a free download on vCloud Hybrid Service when it's ready in Q4 2013. Customers who pay for the Ubuntu Advantage support service can shift their licenses from on-premises deployments to the VMware cloud.

Canonical and VMware have been ramping up their partnership as of late, collaborating to bring VMware's server and network virtualization technology to OpenStack clouds. Canonical may well be making some cash from VMware, as the company generally charges cloud providers for the right to publish Ubuntu images. VMware will also get "an efficient service for ongoing image maintenance," in Canonical's words.

20 Reader Comments

"Windows Server on vCloud Hybrid Service will cost $25 per virtual CPU per month, while CentOS is free."

Is that $25 for the month even if you only fire it up once or is it somehow prorated across the amount of time you actually have it running? While I would really like it to be the latter, I fear that it is almost certainly the former. Still, I would really like the option to pay a dollar for each day that I actually use the instance, with $25 a month as a discount for pre-purchasing.

What real benefits does RedHat provide over CentOS for something like VMWare's Public Cloud? I thought one of the main benefits of RedHat was the virtualization management stuff, which isn't really needed in this case. Other than that, their market seems to be risk-averse companies that buy RedHat for the support contract.

EDIT: I re-read my comment and it sounds like I'm trolling; but I'm really not. I'm genuinely curious what other benefits there are to running RedHat over CentOS these days other than the KVM management and the support contract.

That pricing is simply ridiculous, at $.13/GB/month it costs 3x what my recent storage purchase cost ($936k for 120TB for 5 years versus $340k) and my price per GB is going to go down over the next 5 years because I've already paid for the licenses and controllers and I already have the performance tier of my array and now just need cheap capacity drives. How is anyone justifying IAAS unless they're an SMB with no existing infrastructure?

What real benefits does RedHat provide over CentOS for something like VMWare's Public Cloud? I thought one of the main benefits of RedHat was the virtualization management stuff, which isn't really needed in this case. Other than that, their market seems to be risk-averse companies that buy RedHat for the support contract.

EDIT: I re-read my comment and it sounds like I'm trolling; but I'm really not. I'm genuinely curious what other benefits there are to running RedHat over CentOS these days other than the KVM management and the support contract.

The support contract and the fact that things like Oracle are only going to be certified against RHEL, not CentOS.

25$ a month per instance just for the windows. Is 300$ a year cheaper that what MS charges if you bought a copy off them directly? How does windows server work? Do you buy a copy outright or is it subscription based?

Another question. I really don't know what all this new VMware stuff is but for some reason I was imagining it had to do with eliminating as many computers as possible from a company and running them from "the cloud". I don't see how 600$ a year (it is bound to be at least that if not more once you pay storage, RAM, CPU and bandwith fees) is a cost effective replacement for most computers in a business.

Am I wrong in assuming that this is aimed at eliminating say workers desktops and it is really aimed at substituting the servers and other IT infrastructure related equipment?

25$ a month per instance just for the windows. Is 300$ a year cheaper that what MS charges if you bought a copy off them directly? How does windows server work? Do you buy a copy outright or is it subscription based?

Another question. I really don't know what all this new VMware stuff is but for some reason I was imagining it had to do with eliminating as many computers as possible from a company and running them from "the cloud". I don't see how 600$ a year (it is bound to be at least that if not more once you pay storage, RAM, CPU and bandwith fees) is a cost effective replacement for most computers in a business.

Am I wrong in assuming that this is aimed at eliminating say workers desktops and it is really aimed at substituting the servers and other IT infrastructure related equipment?

Yes, this is aimed at replacing the backend server infrastructure for a company, replacing desktops would be VDI and even doing it in-house I've never seen a positive ROI (return on investment) for doing VDI unless you're going from zero structure on the desktop to a fully managed VDI environment, if your organization does desktops right there's almost no saving and lots of additional costs.

25$ a month per instance just for the windows. Is 300$ a year cheaper that what MS charges if you bought a copy off them directly? How does windows server work? Do you buy a copy outright or is it subscription based?

Another question. I really don't know what all this new VMware stuff is but for some reason I was imagining it had to do with eliminating as many computers as possible from a company and running them from "the cloud". I don't see how 600$ a year (it is bound to be at least that if not more once you pay storage, RAM, CPU and bandwith fees) is a cost effective replacement for most computers in a business.

Am I wrong in assuming that this is aimed at eliminating say workers desktops and it is really aimed at substituting the servers and other IT infrastructure related equipment?

As a developer who uses EC2 regularly, I can tell you that cloud servers are incredibly useful. The main benefit is flexibility. Launch a server, stop a server, clone a server, image a server and move it over to bigger or smaller hardware, whenever you like. No meetings or phone calls required.

25$ a month per instance just for the windows. Is 300$ a year cheaper that what MS charges if you bought a copy off them directly? How does windows server work? Do you buy a copy outright or is it subscription based?

Another question. I really don't know what all this new VMware stuff is but for some reason I was imagining it had to do with eliminating as many computers as possible from a company and running them from "the cloud". I don't see how 600$ a year (it is bound to be at least that if not more once you pay storage, RAM, CPU and bandwith fees) is a cost effective replacement for most computers in a business.

Am I wrong in assuming that this is aimed at eliminating say workers desktops and it is really aimed at substituting the servers and other IT infrastructure related equipment?

Most people pay a flat rate + per cpu rate on Window Server licenses. Of course there are also other costs ( i.e ability for multiple people to remote desktop into the installation at once ) which also cost money.

25$ a month per instance just for the windows. Is 300$ a year cheaper that what MS charges if you bought a copy off them directly? How does windows server work? Do you buy a copy outright or is it subscription based?

Another question. I really don't know what all this new VMware stuff is but for some reason I was imagining it had to do with eliminating as many computers as possible from a company and running them from "the cloud". I don't see how 600$ a year (it is bound to be at least that if not more once you pay storage, RAM, CPU and bandwith fees) is a cost effective replacement for most computers in a business.

Am I wrong in assuming that this is aimed at eliminating say workers desktops and it is really aimed at substituting the servers and other IT infrastructure related equipment?

As a developer who uses EC2 regularly, I can tell you that cloud servers are incredibly useful. The main benefit is flexibility. Launch a server, stop a server, clone a server, image a server and move it over to bigger or smaller hardware, whenever you like. No meetings or phone calls required.

Your IT department sucks, all my guys need to do is shoot me an email with their requirements and machine name and they have a machine in probably 20 minutes, we could do self service but the cost and complexity would never be justified since we don't get in the way of people doing their job.

25$ a month per instance just for the windows. Is 300$ a year cheaper that what MS charges if you bought a copy off them directly? How does windows server work? Do you buy a copy outright or is it subscription based?

Another question. I really don't know what all this new VMware stuff is but for some reason I was imagining it had to do with eliminating as many computers as possible from a company and running them from "the cloud". I don't see how 600$ a year (it is bound to be at least that if not more once you pay storage, RAM, CPU and bandwith fees) is a cost effective replacement for most computers in a business.

Am I wrong in assuming that this is aimed at eliminating say workers desktops and it is really aimed at substituting the servers and other IT infrastructure related equipment?

As a developer who uses EC2 regularly, I can tell you that cloud servers are incredibly useful. The main benefit is flexibility. Launch a server, stop a server, clone a server, image a server and move it over to bigger or smaller hardware, whenever you like. No meetings or phone calls required.

Your IT department sucks, all my guys need to do is shoot me an email with their requirements and machine name and they have a machine in probably 20 minutes, we could do self service but the cost and complexity would never be justified since we don't get in the way of people doing their job.

In point of fact, my IT department does suck. Many do. EC2 is an end run around them.

But having said that, when the IT department doesn't suck, cloud servers offer features such as autoscaling and fine grained programmatic control that you won't get from VMware.

And anyway, what if you just want a giant server for two hours per week? Click a button and just get charged for what you use.

25$ a month per instance just for the windows. Is 300$ a year cheaper that what MS charges if you bought a copy off them directly? How does windows server work? Do you buy a copy outright or is it subscription based?

Another question. I really don't know what all this new VMware stuff is but for some reason I was imagining it had to do with eliminating as many computers as possible from a company and running them from "the cloud". I don't see how 600$ a year (it is bound to be at least that if not more once you pay storage, RAM, CPU and bandwith fees) is a cost effective replacement for most computers in a business.

Am I wrong in assuming that this is aimed at eliminating say workers desktops and it is really aimed at substituting the servers and other IT infrastructure related equipment?

Yes, this is aimed at replacing the backend server infrastructure for a company, replacing desktops would be VDI and even doing it in-house I've never seen a positive ROI (return on investment) for doing VDI unless you're going from zero structure on the desktop to a fully managed VDI environment, if your organization does desktops right there's almost no saving and lots of additional costs.

I realize this isn't a VDI thread, but you're not quite correct in your response. Much of the ROI of VDI is not in pure dollars - enhanced security, centralized data, access from anywhere, immediate provisioning (and reprovisioning), ease of troubleshooting, no desktop hardware to support (rip/replace the thin client) and many more not-so-easily-identifiable benefits, come to play here. I have designed and implemented VDI for years and this is by far the #1 issue I have to address when pitching the solution. The cost in pure dollars has to be realized holistically across the entire system, not just the one-to-one relationship of the user to his/her VDI instance.

What real benefits does RedHat provide over CentOS for something like VMWare's Public Cloud? I thought one of the main benefits of RedHat was the virtualization management stuff, which isn't really needed in this case. Other than that, their market seems to be risk-averse companies that buy RedHat for the support contract.

EDIT: I re-read my comment and it sounds like I'm trolling; but I'm really not. I'm genuinely curious what other benefits there are to running RedHat over CentOS these days other than the KVM management and the support contract.

One important one is indemnification. Red Hat licenses state that Red Hat will step up and defend its business customers from lawsuits if, say, someone up and decides they own VI, and said troll wants royalties from you. CentOS won't protect it's business customers. And if patent trolling has taught is anything, it is that you should get as much protection as possible.

And I'm totally serious about that. It is a major reason most enterprises use RHEL.

What real benefits does RedHat provide over CentOS for something like VMWare's Public Cloud? I thought one of the main benefits of RedHat was the virtualization management stuff, which isn't really needed in this case. Other than that, their market seems to be risk-averse companies that buy RedHat for the support contract.

EDIT: I re-read my comment and it sounds like I'm trolling; but I'm really not. I'm genuinely curious what other benefits there are to running RedHat over CentOS these days other than the KVM management and the support contract.

most of these you can get running on centos but can take a lot of extra fiddling around and can cost you more in time than the cost of a redhat license

plus redhat does more security patching and backports a lot more stuff more often than centos

The annoying hassle is getting commerical software (especially engineering packages) properly licensed on vm's. Most assume you're running them in house on dedicated work stations .Problem these days is getting companies to cough up for workstations , instead of running them on standard desktops. Try running a package that gobbles 8GB+ of ram itself on a standard desktop with 4GB of ram and ultra slow hdd and don't get me started on the fight to get linux installed

I'll probably be called a smelly troll, but I have a question: there is still nowadays a market for US-based cloud service?

Amazon EC? Google Drive? Dropbox? Aren't those all US based?

There is also the lesser known Leostream cloud, for VDI, using RGS for remote 3D to compete with Nvidia GRID. Oh, and that reminds me: Nvidia's GRID appliance which Citrix and VMWare also support. I guess it also directly competes with this story, but for a different business purpose.

I'll probably be called a smelly troll, but I have a question: there is still nowadays a market for US-based cloud service?

Amazon EC? Google Drive? Dropbox? Aren't those all US based?

There is also the lesser known Leostream cloud, for VDI, using RGS for remote 3D to compete with Nvidia GRID. Oh, and that reminds me: Nvidia's GRID appliance which Citrix and VMWare also support. I guess it also directly competes with this story, but for a different business purpose.

I guess it would depend on the context of your question.

Right, no doubt there is an abundant offer of US-based cloud service, but in the context of NSA surveillance is the demand as strong?

Wrong thread for the question but people in it would know the answer. Is affordable VDI yet available for masses? e.g. could people in a retirement community pony up for cheap ChromeBooks and if they wanted to get Windows functionality do it (easily) via VDI at a cost they might be reasonably be able to muster and see pretty much the same thing as if they had a real Windows machine?